This invention relates to the safekeeping and distribution of cash upon demand at geographically remote locations.
Although checks, credit cards and automatic teller machine ("ATM") cards have replaced cash for many transactions, under many circumstances and for a variety of reasons cash is still in demand and frequently required to pay for goods and services. The problem with cash, aside from being bulky and inconvenient when carried in large amounts, is that it is person-independent; i.e. cash cannot be identified as belonging to any particular person. Instead, whoever carries it can use it. Thus, when cash is lost or stolen, for example, the person acquiring it can use it without danger of being detected. Hence, there has been a shift to increasingly rely on other modes of payment to eliminate the problems associated when dealing with cash.
One of the most widely used alternatives to cash is checks. They are simple to write and to process. However, they expose the person accepting the check to the danger of possible nonpayment; for example, due to insufficient funds in the account against which it is drawn. Checks are also an inconvenience to the person writing them because a bank account must first be established and opened, which is a time-consuming and relatively complicated procedure. Moreover, to provide the person accepting the check with some assurance that payment will be received and that the check is not a forgery, the person writing the check is typically subjected to a relatively elaborate identification procedure. The complications attending payment of a check increase with the geographic separation between the bank or other financial institution against which the check is drawn and the place where the check is tendered so that, for example, checks are relatively infrequently used in states outside the state where the account is located, and they are rarely used abroad.
To provide the person accepting payment in the form of a check with more security that payment will actually be received, so-called travelers checks are being used. These are checks issued by a responsible financial institution, which guarantees payment, and they are typically purchased from a variety of vendors. Travelers checks identify the person who purchased and/or is entitled to negotiate them, and when presented they typically require that the person be fully identified prior to acceptance to eliminate possible fraud as when an unauthorized person who gained access to a check attempts to forge the required countersignature. Although travelers checks are an improvement over conventional checks from a security point of view, purchasing, carrying, dealing with and negotiating them is still relatively cumbersome and time consuming. Moreover, a person accepting a travelers check has to await actual payment until it has cleared the normal check processing channels, which can be quite slow when a check is tendered at remote locations.
A further alternative to paying cash are today's widely used credit cards. They are now accepted at literally millions of places, most of which are part of a communications network that links them with the card issuing financial institutions. Although credit cards pose the risk of fraudulent use by unauthorized persons; for example, when they are stolen, they greatly speed up the transaction and actual payment to the vendor. A drawback of payment by credit card is that in order to use them one must first establish an account at an authorized financial institution such as a bank, a savings and loan association, and the like. This is a time-consuming process which requires background investigations on the part of the financial institution, credit checks and the life. As a result, there is a fairly large segment of the population which, for one reason or another, cannot or does not obtain credit cards. In addition, a credit card is subject to limits and relatively steep fees charged to the merchant who accepts it as well as the person to whom it is issued.
A still further alternative to dealing with cash is an ATM card, which is tied to a specific account at a financial institution and which authorizes a user to withdraw cash from ATMs. The amount of cash that can be withdrawn over a given time interval, such as a day, is limited, typically to no more than a few hundred dollars. Like credit cards, ATM cards require that an account be established at a financial institution; without an account, ATM cards are not available as an alternative to carrying cash.
Thus, cash is still often the preferred, and sometimes the only means for settling a transaction. Cash provides the user thereof with a degree of privacy and anonymity and speeds up the completion of a transaction that is not attainable with any of the presently available payment alternatives. Hence, for one reason or another, persons prefer or are required to sometimes carry with them relatively large amounts of cash. It can not only be lost or stolen, it can subject the carrier to danger from unscrupulous criminals. Consequently, there still is a need for an alternative to carrying cash which is as convenient and private as cash.
Attempts to solve this dilemma have been made. For example, certain institutions, such as telephone companies, issue debit cards. They have a given "value" and can be used to pay for goods or services, such as for long distance calls, for example. Debit cards are issued against payment by cash but can only be used to pay for goods or services offered by the issuing company. Thus, their use is severely limited and they lack the versatile aspects of cash entirely; they are effectively no more than a prepaid payment plan of the provider of given goods or services.